


Call that a ghostwriter

by TheMostCrimsonOfCalicos



Category: DreamSMP, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alliteration, Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Compulsion, Ghost Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Ghostbur, Ghosts, Guys ghostburs tag is weird :( guys help, I suppose, Mania, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, One of those., Poetry, Songs recs in endnotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28925412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMostCrimsonOfCalicos/pseuds/TheMostCrimsonOfCalicos
Summary: Dream is a ghost and a perfectionist even past death. A shame then, to find assurances in imperfection. To despise them as you quietly scream to embrace them.(Or something. Real summary below.)Do I tag major character death if the char is already dead.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Wilbur Soot, Dream and Ghostbur
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	1. One of those pens where the ink fades away

**Author's Note:**

> This is the worst fucking thing to tag holy shit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have an illusion writing your songs,  
> A scribe to your whims and woes  
> You have one's regret in your core,  
> Lingering and never on the mind
> 
> Are you still yourself, if all that makes you is held on by fibers
> 
> Got a spirit holding the pen, call that a ghostwriter.

S o rr y. He sketches the s out with difficulty, the letters angular and heavy, but eligible. The o is a small circle, more shape than letter. The two r's are like a meld, written together as if with haste, like conjoined children, like a codependency. The y is decent then long and stretching far past its length, as if the creator didn't know when to cut the y's tail; it trails back to the clustered foreletters, that tail between legs.

Something about it, in all its wrongs, is right. He tries it again. Slow and steady and focused and imperfect. 

The word clings to his pencil and sticks in his head, repeating on loop. It's stuck like something grey and gooey, coating the back of his head and creeping up the front.

Fast and wobbly and frantic

and yet still imperfect. 

Deep in his heart, deep enough that he doesn't know where or what the feeling is, he praises the failure as a success, hands thrown in the air and a victorious bellow escaping his lips.

And then it's him again, sketching shapes as letters and writing letters as incomprehensible as miscellaneous shapes,  
and wasting paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song rec: 4 morant, doja cat


	2. Take the pen from the ghostwriter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My compulsion- my goal- is to tear me to pieces
> 
> Small enough to sweep up. Into a pan or a pail.
> 
> I'll either be discarded, or I'll mold a castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter less abstract, led by Ghostbur. Also longer because because.

Ghostbur blinks in surprise at the state of Dreamare's room. He supposes he should've knocked first, and he does feel rather bad for not doing so, but now that he's seeing all of this, he isn't sure the other would've answered him at all anyway.

(And honestly, what was privacy to a bunch of dead people anyway? It was mostly just practice so he could remind himself to do it whenever he wanted to go to Techno's house. Techno says it doesn't really matter, but it was polite! Ahh. Oh, where was he?)

The room is a mess of papers strewn about the floor. Some are streaked so thickly in granite scribe that he can hardly see white on the page. Others are so lightly pressed-upon that he hardly notices the letters unless he looks closely.

The subject of his searching is sitting at his desk- still unsanded, Ghostbur remembers; he hopes it can't hurt the other's hands- slashing with his pencil so harshly it's nearly like scratching. The lead-point looks extra inky, and he wonders an idle thought of how the other ghost has gotten a color so dark in his tool.

"Hello, Dream!" He is very cheery when he says it, putting all his exuberance into voice, and when the other abruptly stops his mad word-weaving and turns towards him slowly, he gives him a peppy wave.

"Ghostbur." His name is of course two syllables, 'ghost-bur,' but Dream says it likes it's really stuck in his mouth, like cotton candy. Ghost. Bur. Maybe they could get cotton candy at some point! That would be nice. Eating was hard and often not an option, but something sweet would be nice at least in theory!

"Yes, hello again! It's nice to see you. You've been writing a lot, I see also?"

Dream only stares at him for a moment. Blinks and peers about himself. His hand remains raised and clenched around his pencil.

"Hello." He says, a little bit slow on his initial greeting, as he sometimes is. That was okay! Ghostbur was bad at remembering bad things, himself- no one was perfect.

He smiles encouragingly, giving the other a few nods, and he slowly continues. "I have been." His voice is so cold, Ghostbur has noticed. Fridgid and frosted over like it might just crack. Almost like snow. Quiet and cold, with something deadly on the edge of the peace. 

"Can I ask what about? You've written so much here, very impressive, I think."

"... ap. apaaal. lloooww." His words were sticking on his tongue again. Wispy like an icy breeze. His brows furrow just the slightest bit.

"It's alright, take your time."

Dream apparently decides not to as he pulls the latest writing from under his hovering arm. He hands it over, and Ghostbur handles it with as much care as he can.

**_sorr_ y**

Oh. Ah! That must be what all the other things on the floor were as well. Oh, oh he gets it.

"Apologies. You've been writing apologies."

"Mmm."

"Well!" He tucks the page gently under Dream's stiffened right arm.

"Did it make you feel better?"

Dream blinks slow. Looks down at his paper. His writing arm moves slowly to the top left where the 'sorry' sits, lingering overtop of it in silence.

Abruptly, he digs his tip in and rakes it across the word, covering and marring it. He presses so hard he almost tears the paper, putting pressure-marks in the page.

Just as abruptly, he stops, fingers loosening and thin wood falling off the desk to roll across the floor. He looks back to Ghostbur, who's hands are laced as he smiles and hums and sways, eyes reopening to meet bland green.

"I think so." Like a thick blanket of white snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song rec: In Aisle, Nero's Day at Disneyland


	3. A zigzagging highlighter across my perfect essay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I would stomp a sunflower, too. If it grew so lean and tall, drinking up all the sunlight, and blocking out my windows. Could I blamed? Would you not understand? Longing and anger and strife, to a flower.
> 
> In the cold I do not shiver, but in the daylight I wither when faced.
> 
> By the end I heard the turning, the low melodies in the background.  
> And I wish desperately for the silence again.

Tommy is. Annoying.

He is a very muted brightness. Like that big, glowing orb in the sky overshadowed by clouds. Still there and still shining, just a little hidden. He was like that, and he was also loud, when he wasn't cowering from him, and when he is loud, Dream almost wishes he'd go back to the latter.

Almost. Because there isn't any secret that the skittishness is his fault, and not in the 'new person making the child nervous' kind of way, or even in the 'an undead spirit now lingers around my house,' way, (because ghostbur does indeed exist) but in a, 'this person was someone I knew when he was alive, and he did something to me,' way.

Which was, again, annoying. He doesn't have anything to do with Tommy's trauma, except he does, and he doesn't care about it, except he has to because they both live here, Tommy was here first, and it is of no debate where the favoritism lies. 

And while Phil gives him semi-suspicious, intuitive looks on raised brows and Technoblade's eyes drift right past him as if he was more spector than being, he figures whatever he might've did can't be that bad, because otherwise they'd probably be madder. Probably wouldn't let him stay.

But he digressed.

What he wanted was to stay in his room and draw cats. Recently, he's become taken with scribbling little doodles of a cat with a tiny diamond on her head. In his head he calls her Pat, and that doesn't feel right, but nothing does ever. It makes him happy, and Wilbur says that's really all you have to aim for as a ghost, and he thinks he agrees so- It's fine.

It's a good way to spend his time.

When he is left uninterrupted. 

When he's not being used as some conspicuous method of trying and failing to get over issues that he does not care about.

He nearly doesn't answer the door, but he knows enough about the bright-headed blond to know of his belligerence. And so he opens it with an unwelcoming, dull 'what.'

"U- H-Hey! You, uh." He stops, words fleeing from him, and with them goes patience of the house's occupant as well. 

"Me. What do you want."

"Have you, uh, been mm, ya'know, remembering anything?"

He hasn't, actually. But it should be known that if he had, he would not be revealing that fact to this tall child who borderline infuriates him.

"No." 

Tommy keeps looking at him imploringly, the expression melting into something awkward as the time between what is evidently all he plans to say stretches. He doesn't feel it, that tension, he just wants to be left alone.

"Oh. Well ah, good luck?"

Right. Right. "Rmhm." Good, okay. Awesome, he hates kids.

He goes to shut the door. "Oh, wait, if you start to, can y-" he finishes shutting the door, because no he can't, thanks.

He gets it. He did something when he was alive. The kid wanted him to remember and feel guilty or become a villain or something or other. He does not know or care. If he had let the conversation continue, it'd probably ends up with other's shit attempts at subtly, inwhich he would put emphasis on words and watch his face for a reaction he was not going to have.

It makes him feel like he's behind glass, being ogled. He doesn't know what he did, but Ghostbur in life destroyed an entire nation, and he wasn't interrogated constantly. Surely, he could have the same courtesy. He hardly asks for anything, let alone much. 

He just. He leans his head against the wood of the door, careful not to phase through it, and sighs.

He just wants his pencils and papers, his patterns and Pat.

He draws circles in circles in rows of circles, and hates a young teen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rec: It's Alright, Jack Stauber

**Author's Note:**

> just a little thing for ghost dream, because I adore the concept. Ghost dream writers, I love you.


End file.
